This film shows the known universe as mapped through astronomical observations.

Every satellite, moon, planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and in its correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date.

Kind of makes this whole Tiger Woods thing seem sort of insignificant, huh?

(via the AMNH and Gruber)

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

41 replies on “The Known Universe”

  1. What? is Tiger Woods some extremely grassy knoll in Neverland? Never underestimate the power of a 911 call,
    EST phone home. Werner Erhard (born Jack Rosenberg) are you out there?????

  9. You can see that satellite altitudes fall into two families: low-earth (just above the atmosphere, so as not to burn up — cheap) and geo-synchronous (same period as earth, so stays over one spot — expensive).

    You can also see from the galaxy map that we can’t see through our galactic disk.

    On the way back in, you can see that it’s lush on the seaward side of the Himalayas and arid on the other side, just like the Cascades.

    Lots of nice stuff to see here.

  10. also, this makes the olymics seem less “epic” and more adorable……

    awww….look how hard they are working…..cute…..I want to pinch their collective cheeks….

  15. @10 ” also, this makes t he olymics seem less “epic” and more adorable……awww….loo k how hard they are working

    one can substitute “slog and its comments” for “olymics” and it may have a stronger display coordinates 2:14-3:14resolution
    though i may have to check out The Powers of Ten, thnks. we got a library loan over the weekend of ‘Guys and Dolls’

    oh gawd my head in the stars tonight, at least from

  17. when you wish upon a star sometimes things fall including maybe cats maybe black cats on mugs in beds in bags of chips!

    these things will move we don’t know them at all and i don’t think this is particular to relevant to nonsense eldrick the skeeze you are a skeeze for attempting i feel your requirements it sucks it is hard but you really could do better

    wish all the best to you and hope you don’t mwbdlr

  18. Anthony, thanks for posting this. I enjoyed it a lot.

    And WTF is with the comments tonight? I’m starting to wonder if something’s wrong with my reading comprehension because shit is making no sense. Tennis racket spaghetti machine low-flying weather balloon.

  22. Kind of makes this whole Tiger Woods thing seem sort of insignificant, huh?

    I’ll say.

    I’m in LA for the next few months and the lead story on nearly all the local news stations tonight was about Brittany Murphy. Whether it was a heart defect or starving herself or drugs, it’s sad and tragic to be sure, but there are currently two wars going on and people are dying every day. Where’s the concern for them? If Ms. Murphy died because she couldn’t handle the rigors of fame and fortune, my deepest sympathies to her family and loved ones, but there are A LOT of cold, lonely, hungry people out there who would give anything for 1/1000th of what she had.

    Los Angeles needs an infusion of priority and perspective.

  23. @8: Thank you thank you thank you for mentioning it sooner.

    The whole time I was thinking, “Ray and Charles Eames ’09”. This was very well done, but still not original like Powers of Ten was — still a masterpiece all its own. It also went both macro and micro-scale.

    (Beat that, AMNH.)

  25. Very nice but the video didn’t really show us ALL of the known universe. We were shown the macrocosmos but what about the microcosmos? If you’re gonna do the talls, do the smalls too. Just sayin’.

  29. Oh comeon, the second half of this was totally the intro to Star Trek the Next Generation.

    I call shenanigans. Probably recorded in NASA’s parking lot.

  33. @22: One of the main points is that not only is the Tiger Woods thing ridiculously insignificant, So are the two major (and however many minor) current wars, global pollution & climate change, every evil , beauty, natural or man-made disaster… We could explode every nuke on the planet and not make the slightest ripple in the universe. Eventually anyway, that little sun-speck is going to get just fractionally bigger on the way to burning out, and every trace of Earth will disappear (outside a couple odd spacecraft). And still, not even the slightest notice as the universe just keeps on to it’s own dissipation. Have a great day!

  38. @37 – I guess you could say that, or you could say that it’s all the center, and all not the center. The Big Bang happened everywhere at once. It’s all basically un-graspable by the human mind, if you ask me.

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